1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to connectors, in particularly to a general connector for transferring various kinds of optical signals into electronic signals.
2. Description of Related Art
As the electronic industry growing rapidly, nowadays various kinds of electronic devices are used in our daily lives. For inputting commands to control the electronic devices, or transmitting information from one electronic device to another, at least one connector is arranged on a circuit board of the electronic device.
For example, a personal computer usually has a plurality of connectors such as universal serial bus (USB) connectors, external serial advance technology attachment (e-SATA) connectors, RJ-45 connectors, high definition multimedia interface (HDMI) connectors. With the connectors, the personal computer is capable of communicating with external controlling devices and receiving controlling commands, or the personal computer can be connected to another electronic device for mutually transmitting information.
However, as technology keeps improving, information transmission rate required by users is getting higher and higher. The traditional transmission rate of coppers wire can not meet the requirement any more. Therefore, one or more optical fiber wires with optical connector have been adopted by several kinds of novel transmission technologies for increasing the transmission rate. In practice, future connector apparatus adopting optical connector and optical fiber wire for transmitting various format signals may have a similar look of a conventional connector.
However, the above mentioned optical fiber wire can not be directly connected to a circuit board of a conventional electronic device. But some circuit board is too old to process optical signal even with an optical fiber wire installed thereon.
Furthermore, there are already several kinds of electrical connectors arranged on the circuit board. The optical connector to be arranged on the circuit board will occupy more space. Therefore, a novel connector that not only can solve the problem that the old circuit board can not process the optical signal, but no further space will be occupied by more connector.